DG - I have had this fact NAGGING at me since the annoucement of delay (if VSl is running down these bugs - EVEN VSL may not catch all the little critters.) Seriously VSL is the BEST sample/software company out there on this sort of beta testing thing BUT they/we are all human. I am now giving some serious consideration to something like Bidule. Get VE PRO for the next project later in the year.
Rob, unless you absolutely have to change your system now, I would say just carry on as you are. Check out VE Pro when it is released. If it seems to like hosting your other sample players, then give it a good thrashing during a down week (if you have such a thing), and then assuming all is OK, use it on the next gig that comes up.
Regarding Bidule, the only advantage that I can see over any other VSTi host is that if you run it on your sequencer machine, you can run in Rewire. This means that you don't have to re-load every time you change project. However, if you are currently using the networking capabilities of VE3, Bidule does nothing for you. Nada.
DG